The cartoon cover kicked off a national debate across the US: a muscular China standing on a beach, pushing a skinny Uncle Sam around in the sand. 'Is the US a 97-pound weakling?' the Forbes magazine cover story asked. Inside, it argued that it was, stating that the US was losing its competitive edge to China, whose universities pumped out more than 800,000 engineers in 2004 compared to just 222,335 in the US. That unflattering comparison flew around America, appearing in think-tank reports, politicians' speeches and newspaper editorials, all fretting that the country was about to be overtaken by China. Voices in the US began calling for a cold-war-like arms race to churn out more scientists and engineers to help the US catch up with China. But while nervous Americans continue to wring their hands, it is becoming increasingly clear that China's army of engineers is not about to help it elbow its way past the US - at least not just yet. This was made clear last week at a conference on engineering education at the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, where Chinese educators were told that despite having the world's largest number of engineering students, China still lacked well-trained professionals. University vice-president Tu Shandong told the gathering of 100 engineering educators that while the mainland could be proud of its engineering programmes, an increasing number of employers were beginning to ask 'embarrassing questions' about the lack of professional knowledge, poor communication and teamwork skills among Chinese engineering majors. Last October, McKinsey & Co, in a report entitled 'China's looming talent shortage', argued that despite the mainland's vast number of university graduates, few had the skills to work in world-class companies. It warned that the situation had 'serious implications for the multinationals now in China and for the growing number of Chinese companies with global ambitions'. The report, based on interviews with 83 human resources professionals, said that on average fewer than 10 per cent of Chinese job candidates were suitable for work in multinational firms in nine categories, including engineering, accounting, finance and life sciences. Fang Shimin , a molecular biologist and commentator on higher education, said he saw no sign that China would pose a serious challenge to the US soon. 'Although the quantity of college and graduate students has been growing in China, the quality has drastically decreased,' he said. He blamed this on the rapid expansion of university enrolments in recent years, which he said was one of the biggest problems facing the mainland's education system. The number of university students in China has quadrupled to 23 million since 1998, the year before Beijing began forcing universities to sharply boost enrolments. And the numbers are set to keep rising. The percentage of college-aged students enrolled in universities is expected to double to 40 per cent by 2020. 'There are simply too many students and the resources, such as faculties and facilities, are overstretched,' said Dr Fang. 'It's not uncommon for a professor to mentor more than 40 graduate students at the same time, which means there is virtually no mentoring at all.' Professor Tu said: 'Universities are facing a shortage of both software and hardware. We don't have enough teachers, in terms of quantity and quality, and we don't have enough equipment or capital.' He said higher student numbers also meant training and internships had to be reduced and simplified. Professor Tu said engineering education in China started to develop much later than in developed countries and that the government had not done enough to promote it. He said the government should make improvement of engineering education a national strategy. Academics also lament the fact that not enough enterprises offer engineering students internships, which means that students lack practical training in the field. A recent study by the East China University of Science and Technology, found only 14 per cent of engineering graduates soon went on to become qualified engineers, which Professor Tu attributed to excessive emphasis on academic attainment. 'Our education should be closely combined with our rapidly growing industry to increase educational resources,' he said. 'We should establish some kind of policy to reduce taxes for companies accepting interns. Students need practical experience and experience in management and teamwork to gain an overall knowledge, not just textbook education.' The McKinsey report said while China had 1.6 million engineers, accounting for 33 per cent of majors in the country, the main drawback was the education system's bias toward theory. It said Chinese students had little practical experience in projects and teamwork. The result, it said, was that China's pool of young engineers considered suitable for work at multinationals was just 160,000 - no larger than Britain's. Dr Fang said that many students in engineering and computer science complained that they had gained little useful or practical knowledge at university, and that they and their advisers were preoccupied with churning out research papers - which he said were poorly produced - to meet school requirements. Most universities in China require graduate students to publish at least two research papers each year in key journals and teachers often have to turn out many more. Some also argue the official statistics for the number of trained engineering graduates may be skewed. In December researchers at Duke University in the US examined the numbers, which they said had been used to 'fuel fears America is losing its technological edge'. Their report concluded that China's Ministry of Education had gathered the data from provinces, which did not break down the numbers by major, and which had included not only people in traditional engineering disciplines, but also information technology specialists and technicians. It also said while US figures included only the annual output of accredited four-year engineering programmes in the US, China also counted three-year programmes and diploma holders. According to Ministry of Education statistics quoted by Duke, China produced just 351,537 engineers with bachelor's degrees in 2003, with the remaining 292,569 having come out of two- and three-year programmes similar to community colleges in the US. The Duke report said that even these numbers were misleading as there was confusion in China over the definition of engineering programmes. 'Any bachelor's or short-cycle degree with the word 'engineering' in its title is included in these numbers,' the authors of the report said. 'This means that the reported number of engineers produced by China ... may very well include the equivalent of motor mechanics and industrial technicians.' Andrew Grant, the author of the McKinsey report, said improving the quality of China's graduates would be a long-term effort, but even modest improvements could make a big difference. 'If the proportion of Chinese engineering graduates who could work at global companies increased to 25 per cent from today's 10 per cent,' he said, 'China's pool of qualified young engineers would be among the world's largest by 2008.' Additional reporting by Priscilla Jiao
